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You never know what you’re going to encounter when you’re taking a stroll along the beach. One woman who was walking her dogs near the ocean in Oregon got quite a surprise when she spotted a shark that had washed up on the shore, and she pulled out her phone to chronicle her successful effort to return it to the waters where it came from.

Oregon boasts approximately 360 miles of coastline that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and those waters are home to around fifteen different species of sharks.

It’s not a major hotbed for those animals compared to other parts of the country, and there have only been 31 recorded attacks on humans since the Global Shark Attack File started keeping tabs in 1958 (a woman who was killed after the fishing boat she was on capsized 200 miles off the coast in 1975 represents the only fatality).

All of those incidents fall under the “unprovoked” umbrella, and while a woman who recently encountered a beached shark at Nehalem Bay State Park would have fallen into the “provoked” column if she’d been bitten while trying to assist it, she thankfully avoided that fate while coming to its aid.

A woman in Oregon filmed herself staging a fairly dramatic rescue after encountering a shark that had washed up on the beach

On October 10th, Colleen Dunn headed to Nelham Bay State Park (located around 60 miles west of Portland) with her two dogs as the sun was setting in the hopes she’d be able to find some sand dollars on the beach.

According to Oregon Live, something else caught her eye while she was walking along the shore: an object she initially mistook for a piece of driftwood, surmised might be a harbor seal pup as she got closer, and eventually realized was a three-foot-long shark (she thought it was a baby great white, but it was actually of the salmon variety).

Dunn, who recently moved to Oregon from Hawaii, said she was unsure what to do but felt she had a moral obligation to help the animal. The mother of three didn’t want to put herself in harm’s way, but said she was confident she’d be able to assist it without endangering herself.

She also pulled out her phone so she’d have proof of the encounter she knew she’d relay to her family and friends, and while it took her a couple of efforts to get the shark into deeper water, she said she watched it swim away around 10 minutes after she escorted it into a higher tide.

The outlet spoke with  Taylor Chapple, a marine biologist at Oregon State University who specializes in sharks, to gain some more insight into how it ended up beached in the first place.

He ended up being a bit of a Debbie Downer, as he noted most sharks that wash up in the fall do so because they’ve developed a brain infection, and he said it was “very unlikely to survive” after being returned to the water.

Dunn said, “I choose to believe he made it” after being informed of his assessment, and I can’t help but respect the optimism.